The Dales Pony: Bred for the hills

It is always amusing to observe someone attempting to traverse one of the Yorkshire Dales' distinctive limestone pavements, those treacherous expanses of bone-white slabs known as clints surrounded by deep holes called grykes. Tottering hesitantly from rock to rock the person appears to be performing a drunken ballet.

But the only way to cross limestone pavement is by carefully watching every footstep. One slip can mean a broken leg or even worse. So marvel, then, at the extraordinary ability of the Dales Pony to walk across such a hazardous terrain with comparative ease.

"This is the sort of landscape the Dales was bred for," says Gill Woods, patting her 14-year-old mare, named Bow, in its field near Horton-in-Ribblesdale.

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"Bow is so canny and sure-footed she just sort of puts down her head and off she goes. If she's carrying a novice rider she'll proceed carefully, as if conveying a fragile load of spun glass, but if I get on her she can't wait to get moving. She's like a rocking horse."

Mostly black or brown, with the odd one bay-grey, the Dale's ancestor is the famously hardy Galloway pony, or "Gallowa's" as they are still known in Yorkshire. It is also a close relative of the Fell Pony, the indigenous wild breed of northern England, and in the 19th century the stock was strengthened further with the blood of Welsh Cobs.

On the green roads and pack horse routes across the Pennines, Dales Ponies were the legendary forebears of the juggernauts which now thunder across the M62, or those long goods trains on the Settle-Carlisle railway line, and in Victorian times they became the main beasts of burden in the lead mines from Grassington Moor northwards through Swaledale to County Durham and Northumberland.

Almost every characteristic of the breed was perfect for the rigours of Pennine life.

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As one reference book on horse breeds puts it: "The Dales is immensely strong with a weight-bearing capability that is well out of proportion to its size. It combines courage and stamina with a calm temperament and, having a strong constitution, it is rarely sick."

Long pack trains of them took coal from the pits of Durham to the lead smelters of Weardale and Swaledale, then carried pigs of lead back to the docks at Middlesbrough.

At the same time, almost every hill farm from North Yorkshire to Northumberland kept at least one Dales pony.

It could easily carry a farmer and two bales of hay – one either side – up on to the fells to feed sheep in winter.

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By the 1930s thousands were in use across northern England and the Midlands, but many of them were requisitioned by the Army in the Second World War.

Their great strength and the toughness of their feet – the horn is so hard they don't require shoeing – made them, according to one observation at the time, "for Army purposes second to none in the country." Others were taken to towns and cities to pull carts, replacing vehicles because of petrol rationing. But the breed's decline began when non-working ponies were allocated no feed ration and – being considered surplus to requirements – most of them were put down. After the war, tractors took over much of the pony's

work in hill farms and the population

went into free-fall.

By the mid-1950s just four names were registered in the Stud Book.

As the Dales Pony historian, Iona Fitzgerald, notes: "It appeared that extinction was about to overtake the breed."

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Before it could die out, however, the Dales was kept alive by the determination of a few farmers, most of whom lived in County Durham, where the breed had provided the main hauling power at the lead mines of Alston Moor and Weardale, and by the start of the 1960s the stud book's listing had grown to a couple of dozen. Today there are upwards of 150 mares now registered for breeding, although the Dales is still officially categorised as "rare".

In Ribblesdale, Gill Woods is one of a growing number of people in the Yorkshire Dales who is championing the breed to maintain its historic link with the area.

She keeps four on her smallholding next to the Settle-Carlisle railway line, using them for trail riding and pony trekking because of their great strength and good temperament.

"I've done five-day trails covering 16 or more miles each day, going over places like Horsehead Pass between Littondale and Langstrothdale. Anyone who's been there knows how steep that is, yet they'll go up and down slopes like that all day. Then we just park them in a field overnight while we bed-and-breakfast, because they don't require extra feed."

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Besides their strength, three other qualities make them the perfect choice for trail riding. One is an uncanny sense of direction, which allows them to find their way home no matter how far they've travelled. Another is their acute intelligence. "My little gelding can untie himself," Gill says. "He's watched me do the knot so often and learned how to release it, so I've had to come up with a new knot."

The third is a superb trot – their best gait – which has given the Dales a new lease of life in show rings. They have been found to be good jumpers, winning a host of prizes at top equine events like the Horse of the Year Show and in Europe and North America. Jo Ashby, secretary of the Derbyshire-based Dales Pony Society, describes the breed as still something of a well-kept secret.

Since very nearly dying out, the Dales has had some good years but still experienced one or two setbacks. Most recently, there was a major health scare over something known as Foal Immuno-Deficiency Syndrome, which left a Dales foal unable to fight infection with its own antibodies. Thankfully, a new genetic test has led to the screening of Dales ponies to avoid crossing two carriers of the condition.

The breed's next step, hopes Colin Speakman of the Yorkshire Dales Society, is to become as familiar a sight in the landscape as it was a century ago.

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"These ponies are incredibly sturdy, like a smaller version of the carthorse, and bred for the kind of work they did on pack horse routes and in the lead mines. They are the absolute living link with the heritage of the Dales.

"With their superb motive power they might have a role to play in conservation work, for instance, because they can operate on steep fellsides or be used for snigging logs in dense woodland. It's a tribute to their remarkable agility and power that even today there are places where the Dales Pony can happily work that quad bikes would struggle to reach."

For further details of the Dales Pony visit the Dales Pony Society website at www.dalespony.org